Martin Ransohoff (born 1927 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is a cinema and television producer.
Ransohoff founded the film production company Filmways, Inc. in 1960 and remained with the company until 1972. He attempted to "create" female movie stars during the 1960s - the actresses who achieved the greatest success under his tutelage were Ann Margret, Tuesday Weld and Sharon Tate, who featured in several of his films from 1964 until her death in 1969. He is also a cousin of famous neurosurgeon Joseph Ransohoff.
The Beverly Hillbillies brought Ransohoff his first success in 1962 and thereafter he turned his attention to films.
His notable films include:
Ransohoff felt compelled to fire director Sam Peckinpah after the beginning of principal shooting on Cincinnati Kid, The (1965) due to disagreements over the conception of the film. The incident led to a physical altercation between the two. In the early 1970s, remarking on their fight, Peckinpah claimed Ransofhoff got the worst of it: "I stripped him as naked as one of his badly told lies", claimed the director known as "Bloody Sam" for the violence in his films. Peckinpah was replaced with Norman Jewison, a relative newcomer to feature film directing, whose long and successful career brought him three Oscar nominations as best director and the Irving Thalberg Award in 1999 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
